Brandon Prinzing & The Old Revival launch tour in Bend

Former Corner Gospel Explosion guitarist stands up for rock ’n’ roll

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Brandon Prinzing, far left, and his new band The Old Revival will launch their first tour of Oregon and California at M&J Tavern on Friday. In October, the band will release its debut album, "Hear This," recorded with Underoath's Aaron Gillespie. (Submitted photo) - Bulletin

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Brandon Prinzing, far left, and his new band The Old Revival will launch their first tour of Oregon and California at M&J Tavern on Friday. In October, the band will release its debut album, "Hear This," recorded with Underoath's Aaron Gillespie. (Submitted photo)7684999

Brandon Prinzing knew his songs needed a loud rock band. So when he released an acoustic duo EP last year, he gave the project a very loud-rock-band-souding name: Riot on a Sunday.

A little more than a year later, the former Corner Gospel Explosion guitarist has his four-piece band, which will kick off its first tour — an eight-date jaunt through Oregon and California — at M&J Tavern on Friday. But he no longer has the name. His band is now known as Brandon Prinzing & The Old Revival, a moniker that seems more apt to grace last year’s EP than the massive-sounding album the band is readying for an October release — a fact that’s not lost on the band’s members.

“Before I heard any of your music and you said that you wanted to be The Old Revival, I was like, ‘He’s gonna be folk,’” lead guitarist Jared Britton said while sitting with his bandmates before a practice at Prinzing’s house in northwest Bend. “And then, I heard the album, and I’m like, ‘I’m in.’”

As Prinzing explained, the “Old Revival” refers not to old-timey folk or roots music, but rather the meat-and-potatoes rock ’n’ roll that influenced him and his bandmates — all in their late 20s to mid-30s — growing up.

“Why do any of us go to a show? Because for two hours, nothing matters except for that show,” he said. “It’s like, you’re there with however many — 300 other people, 10,000 other people, whatever — people that you don’t know that are all there for the same reason. (They) all have their own problems in their own lives, but for three hours, it’s like being recharged. … So for us, that’s where the Old Revival came from. It was like music, going to a show — going to a good rock show — is like a revival. It’s like going to church for a musician.”

Prinzing takes that concept to its logical extreme onstage, with his white linen shirt, black slacks and black suspenders suggesting a rock ’n’ roll preacher proselytizing power chords and pop hooks. And there’s plenty of that on the upcoming 10-song album, “Hear This,” which was recorded over five days in March at Rio Grande Studios in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with Underoath drummer and The Almost leader Aaron Gillespie — a musical hero of Prinzing’s — producing.

Gillespie met Prinzing when the two toured together late last year. Prinzing at the time had joined folk songwriter Rosco Wuestewald in Onward, Etc.

“I showed him the Riot on a Sunday EP, and he liked it; he’s like, ‘You need to make a full rock album,’” Prinzing said. “And by the end of the tour, he’s like, ‘How about you let me make it? I’ll produce it; meet me in New Mexico and let’s make a full rock album.’”

Tensions arose in the Riot on a Sunday lineup when Gillespie also offered to play drums on the album. After much soul-searching, Prinzing decided to record with Gillespie alone, effectively ending Riot on a Sunday.

When he returned to Bend, he discussed what to do next with longtime friend Jesse Martinez, who played bass in the final incarnation of Riot on a Sunday and is still in that role in The Old Revival. Martinez brought in childhood friend Gus Hulstein on drums; recent Portland transplant Britton was introduced to Prinzing through Precious Byrd bassist Lonnie Chapin.

“I really stayed up tons of nights trying to figure out what the hell I was gonna do,” Prinzing said. “In talking with Aaron, Aaron’s like, ‘The hardest part you’ll ever have when you come back is finding a full band that can play this.’”

“Which, he lied, because it just took a few phone calls and we were a four-piece,” Martinez added.

But the original inspiration for this project came about long before Prinzing joined Corner Gospel Explosion in 2015. When he was 21, his girlfriend at the time was in a four-wheeler accident that left her paralyzed below the waist. Prinzing stopped playing music to help take care of her, but eventually picked up an acoustic guitar “to not lose (his) mind” and began writing songs.

“I’d always been in bands where it was like, ‘Write a pop-punk song,’ write this song — because I was never really the person singing, I was always the writer,” he said. “… For the first time in my life, I can sit down and write songs that I just want to write for me, because nobody’s probably gonna ever hear them and I just — this is what I want to do, this is what I want to say.”

Many of those initial songs are part of The Old Revival’s repertoire today. But “Bitter Cold,” the album’s breakout song, was coaxed out of Prinzing by Gillespie during the whirlwind recording sessions.

“The end of the fourth day, Aaron was like, ‘I think we need new stuff. We need some new songs to balance this out,’” Prinzing said. “… So he goes, ‘Go home and write me a hit song. Go back to your hotel room, don’t do anything else, and write a song and we’re recording it in the morning.’ So I was panicking — I was like, what am I gonna do?

“It’s funny, because it’s the song that now everybody — at least the industry people that we know that have heard it — are like, ‘That’s the single, that’s the best song on the record,’” he continued. “And that’s the song I wrote that night in like an hour and a half.”